Capturing Captives

We’ve told you again and again (HERE for instance,or HERE) how you should always have a little sketchbook in your pocket when you go to an art museum. Memory enhancement; sharpening of perception; happy fun. Good stuff like that.

Well, the zoo is also a good place to sketch — for all the reasons noted above and more. For one thing, children are vastly amused (and adults perplexed). For another thing, animals make pretty good models unless they’re agouti (giant rats with deer legs) who never cease dashing around (though Mlle NiceWork managed a nice rapid sketch of one of the frantic beasts). Most importantly perhaps, drawing them flatters the proud animals and sometimes they will grant you wishes.

Today the captives of that way-bigger-than-it-looks-at-first zoo meandering the northeast slopes of L.A.’s Griffith Park served as our subjects. Me, I bagged a tapir, a submerged hippo and a Tadjik markhor. Mlle NiceWork captured those as well, and went on to catch some meerkats, a horned yak-like creature from Tibet whose name I forget, and ducks-a-plenty.

Instead of my usual black, I came armed with four different colors of woodless pencils. Two dark shades of brown, a yellowish sort of thing and deep blue. One of the dark browns was commandeered by Sketcher Two, but the three remaining tones gallantly stepped into the breach with the results displayed before you in this post.